Liberty Belle: The Avengers
by Elphaba818
Summary: After being frozen for nearly seventy years, Jamie Harper has returned with her friend and partner, Steve Rogers, to help S.H.I.E.L.D. track down Loki and recover the Tesseract. However, Jamie is still mourning her brother Trent, and has theories of what may have become of Johann Schmidt. Could she be more of a liability than help when she has plans of her own with the Tesseract?


**Hello to all! I figured after the unintentional long wait I made all of you, my dear readers, for the final chapter of Liberty Belle, I would make up for it by posting the first chapter of the Avengers as quick as I could.  
**

**Here's the scoop with Jamie in the Avengers. I read online that Steve had only been unfrozen for about two weeks before Loki appeared and stole the Tesseract. Well, I feel that's not long enough for he and Jamie to be able to start exploring the twenty-first century, so in this story, it was two months after they were unfrozen, not two weeks. Also, expect Jamie to much different in The Avengers compared to Liberty Belle. Unlike Steve, who hadn't really left much behind when he was frozen, Jamie lost her last family member, so she's mourning, and as a pre-teen, she's dealing with this new world much differently than he is.**

**I hope you all like the first chapter of The Avengers! Please, read and review!**

* * *

**Chapter One:****A New World**

"That's her!"

"She's coming this way!"

"Get out of the way! You don't want to make her mad!"

Twelve-year-old Jamie Harper rolled her eyes, but kept her sour expression on her face as she strolled unhurriedly down the hallways to her classroom.

It had been a little over two months since she'd been enrolled in a public middle school in downtown Manhattan, and she'd already made a reputation for herself throughout not only her own sixth grade class, but throughout the entire school as being someone not to be messed with, and to not perform bullying activities in front of.

When she'd first arrived at the school, she'd been in the sidecar of a motorcycle, which her legal guardian, Steve Rogers, owned. Many whispers spread just on that alone, but she became even more mysterious when her homeroom teacher had her introduce herself to the rest of the class. For starters, she hadn't wanted to. She had told her teacher to just let her sit down at her desk and start the lesson. The class had stared, as did her teacher, but still insisted that Jamie introduce herself and 'not to be shy,' as she had put it. Jamie had huffed, but turned to her class nonetheless.

"Hello," she had said with a scowl. "My name is Jamie Harper. I'm twelve-years-old. I have no interest in being here, so just leave me alone."

Then she had stormed off to her seat, ignoring the perplexed looks she was receiving from both her teacher and her new classmates.

For the first few weeks, she had been a talk of gossip amongst students, what with her incredibly angry, but also quiet nature that wanted nothing to do with making any friends, and her remarkable brain from only a matter of days upon arriving, pulling herself to have the topmost marks in not only her grades in her class, but in the entire school district. She was a genius. She spent her every lunch break in the school library, pouring over textbooks that not even the older eighth graders could understand as she muttered things under her breath and took personal notes in a series of special notebooks she kept under lock and key, which she wore around her neck. When asked why she was so secretive about these notes, she replied,

"Because I know all of you would love to see what's inside of them."

Indeed, many other kids in other grades, be it because they thought that Jamie's notebooks contained the secrets that led to her being so smart or just from simple interest, had one day tried to sneak a few of the notebooks away from her and break open the locks, but she had caught them in the act, and had promptly screamed insanity's to the heavens.

From that day on, she was mainly ignored for the remainder of the first month, until the day came that garnered her as the most feared girl in the entire school.

It had started off as any other school day. Jamie had been on her way to the library on her lunch hour, when rather loud cheering and screaming from down another hallway had caught her attention, and out of pure interest, she had changed her course of direction to that area. What she found, however, made her reputation change at the school forever.

A young sixth grade boy that was in her class was being beaten against a set of locker banks by a rather larger, burly eighth grader. The young sixth grader was crying with pain, and the eighth grader was laughing and smiling viciously as he wailed on him. They were surrounded by a large semi-circle of viewers, some cheering on the eighth grader, and others watching sadly as the sixth grader was beaten.

Jamie hadn't hesitated when she caught sight what was happening. In one swift motion, she had dropped her textbooks and backpack on the ground, danced right up to the eighth grader, and caught his punch as he recoiled to strike the sixth grader.

There was a long silence as the semi-circle of viewers stared, not believing their eyes, as Jamie stood on her tiptoes, and whispered, loudly enough for everyone around to hear her, but also in a menacing tone, into the ear of the eighth grader,

"You will not lay another finger on that boy."

The bully had turned around and openly laughed in her face. "Just what exactly are you going to do about it, nerd?"

"I'm going to make sure you never hurt him, or anyone else again," she had replied. She sank down into a low stance, her fists out in front of her. "You are going to fight me. Right here. Right now. If I can beat you in one move, you will leave that boy alone, and you will never, I repeat, _never_ hurt him, nor any other student in this school ever again."

Everyone had stared. Jamie was a good four inches smaller than the eighth grader. There was no way she had any chance of beating him. Indeed, the bully had just kept laughing, and sank down into a fighting stance in return.

"Fine," he said with a haughty chuckle. "I'm _so_ going to enjoy this."

"I really want to make this self-defense," Jamie had growled. "Come at me."

The bully had attempted to run forward and punch her right in the cheek, but in a swift, nothing short of graceful movement, she sidestepped to the right, pirouetted in place, and promptly punched him right in the nose. There was a loud crack, and the bully went flying back at least six feet into the locker banks behind him, landing against them with a loud thud.

Everyone went very, very quiet. They couldn't believe what they had just witnessed. Jamie paid their stares no mind. She simply turned to the younger sixth grader and offered him her hand.

"Are you all right?" she had asked.

The sixth grader slowly nodded, and took her offered hand and got to his feet. He, too, was in awe of the girl before him. As soon as he seemed well enough on his own, Jamie had turned to the crowd, and addressed them all in a loud, clear voice.

"I hope you all spread the word. As I made sure to state, that was in self-defense. I do not intend to be expelled just because I was the only one willing to stop him from continuing to hurt this boy. I do not tolerate bullying of any kind."

And then she collected her backpack and books, and continued on her way to the library.

From that moment on, bullies of all shapes and sizes took it upon themselves to try and jump Jamie at the oddest times: on her way in or out of the bathroom, as she was entering or exiting the building, out of nowhere in the hallways. Still, they weren't able to harm one hair on her head, but she would wallop each and every one in a whirlwind of bruises, each one, as she would put it, "In strict self-defense." She was smart enough to never punch unless one of them started it, which made her, as the entire school board were forced to see, the victim.

This just made the bullies angrier. Not only was she besting them, she was doing so with the school being forced to support her actions. They started to try cornering her in groups. While they still weren't able to hurt Jamie, this was where she started growing really angry. With each group she was forced to defend herself against, she would start throwing out really threatening warnings.

"If you're all smart, you'll walk away now. You are really starting to make me mad."

Her warnings just seemed to make the bullies even more exited, and they tried harder than ever to corner her. It got to the point that one day when awaiting her legal guardian to show up on his motorcycle, a group of bullies tried to surprise her, but instead of just punching each of them once in self-defense, Jamie had finally snapped. It had turned into quite a spectacle by the time Steve Rogers arrived five minutes later on his motorcycle. He literally had to force his way through a rather large circle of students and teachers to get a clear view of Jamie fighting four boys, all a few inches taller than her. Two of them were on the ground, knocked out cold with black eyes starting to develop. One was on the sidelines, his nose bloody and cradling his wrist which appeared to be sprained. The other two Jamie was still fighting. They looked somewhat nervous now, what with her enraged glare as she fought viciously against them, but they still had reputations to uphold, and they fought on. Steve pushed his way to into the ring, and had to restrain Jamie before she did any serious damage to any of the boys.

There were rumors around the school that she would possibly be expelled, but she returned the next day, sour and angry, but still at the top of the entire school. She was left alone from that day on, and unless she caught wind that a fellow student had been bullied, she hadn't since raised her fists.

Getting back to the present, although Jamie found the whispering going on with her fellow students as she passed by them to be annoying, she had her mind focused on other, more important things.

She entered her classroom, swung her backpack behind her chair, and slid into her desk, ignoring the feared looks she was receiving from a group of nearby students. It was growing tedious now, how they stared at her. And to think, in another lifetime, she had been kind, friendly girl that had been bullied around the clock by kids just like them…

She turned around in her chair, unzipped her backpack, and pulled out one of her three special notebooks, her white one. She unclasped the clasp to her necklace and took it off, fiddling around until she found the correct key for this particular notebook. She unlocked the lock, slipped her necklace back on, and opened her notebook. A few curious students tried to wander casually past her, but Jamie quickly glared in their direction, and they kept their distance.

One girl, however, didn't even flinch at Jamie's glare. Her name was Emily Martin, and she'd been trying to get Jamie to open up ever since she'd enrolled in the school two months earlier. Emily skipped right up to her desk, and Jamie quickly shut her notebook to ensure that its contents would not be seen.

"Good morning, Jamie," said Emily kindly.

"Morning," Jamie growled.

"Did you study for that test in Science later today?" Emily went on. "I tried, but none of the contents make any sense to me!"

"Didn't need to study," Jamie grumbled, starting to become irritated by Emily's preppy voice. "It was all very simple."

"Do you think you can go over the study guide with me before the test then?" said Emily hopefully. "I'd really appreciate–"

"No," Jamie interrupted shortly.

"I promise I won't be a bother!" Emily pleaded. "Please, Jamie? I just need you to explain–"

"I said, no!" Jamie snapped. "And no means no!"

Emily frowned, but stepped away from her desk.

"Okay," she murmured softly. "Sorry to have bothered you." And she turned and walked sadly back to her own desk on the other end of the classroom.

As soon as she was convinced no one would bother her, Jamie turned her attention back down to the pages in the notebook before her. The pages were filled with detailed notes regarding the details of the world's first two superheroes, Captain America and his sidekick Liberty Belle, the genetically enhanced super soldiers that had been created over seventy years ago to put a stop to the Nazi's secret research team known as Hydra back in World War Two.

Everything that pertained two both of them Jamie had scribbled down in her notebook. Where and how the two of them grew up, who their family and friends had been, how the special serum they had both received enhanced them, how they had only two months ago been both discovered frozen alive in a glacier near the North Pole, and most importantly, their secret identities: Steve Rogers and Jamie Harper.

Jamie Harper was twelve-years-old, but she was also nearly eighty-two, and the Girl Wonder who, decades earlier, had been the child super soldier known as Liberty Belle.

* * *

The school day came to an end, and like the rest of the class, Jamie collected her things from her desk, slung her backpack back on, and left the classroom in a hurry. Genius though she may be, the work in her classes bored her. The only reason she is as smart as she is was because of her photographic memory, and that was something she'd had even before her muscles and reflexes had become altered by the serum that made her into the being that she is. Whatever she sees and hears she unconsciously remembers. Now, nearly a century later, she found herself bored within her classroom. In order to do well, she was forced to pay attention in order to remember it forever, and that therefore interfered with her time to research more important matters.

She walked sluggishly down the hall, and students of all grades and sizes got out of her way. She rolled her eyes in annoyance to their behavior, but other than that made no visible sign that she was mad. Her priorities were on finding Steve and his motorcycle and getting out of here. Between listening to her homeroom teacher droning on and on about some important war that took place after she was frozen called the Cold War, she'd been working on her research with her red and purple notebooks.

Ever since she'd been made a lieutenant in her army days, she'd been known to research and take notes on the most unusual topics, but there was also some sort of truth to be found in her work as well. Currently, she was working out possible theories as to what had happened to her and Steve's archenemy all those years ago. The leader of Hydra, Johann Schmidt, otherwise known as the Red Skull. Like herself and Steve, Schmidt was also a superior being, having received a similar serum injection to the one's they had received in their medical experiments. During their last battle with him, Schmidt had disappeared into what had seemed like a portal to some other distant dimension, and Jamie was convinced he was still out there, biding his time until he found some way to return here. Steve called this idea she had ridiculous, but Jamie ignored his opinion. She was certain she was right. Her red notebook contained all the information she could find and remember about Schmidt, and the purple one was a revised version of what she could remember of all the theories she had written years ago when in the army about other worlds, and had discerning facts if it was possible for a genetically enhanced being like herself, Steve, or Schmidt could even survive in some other alternate world.

Steve was already there when Jamie exited the school building. Ever since that fight several weeks with those boys, Steve made sure to always be in time and in front of the school on his motorcycle by the time school got out. He didn't want her to get into another fight any time soon. Jamie knew this, but unlike how she was with her other classmates, she was in no one annoyed by Steve's actions. Instead, she found this comforting, and she even smiled and waved to Steve as she approached.

Steve waved and smiled when he caught sight of Jamie. He was doing his best to try and adjust to this new world, but he knew Jamie was having a much harder time trying to adapt.

He really hadn't left much behind when he was frozen with her. His parents were both dead already, as was his best friend Bucky, killed in action while battling against Hydra. Everyone he'd known before he'd been frozen he'd received personal government files for. To his great disappointment, nearly everyone he and Jamie had known from their days in the war had died: Colonel Phillips, Timothy Dugan 'Dum Dum,' Jim Morita, James Falsworth, Jacques Dernier, Gabe Jones, and Howard Stark, though he and Jamie had learned that he had had a son before he died: Tony Stark, and that he was now a superhero himself, going by the alias of Ironman. The only person he knew but was still alive was Agent Peggy Carter, the young woman he had fallen in love with. However, as he had been assumed dead for over seventy years, Peggy had moved on with her life. She was an old woman now. She'd gotten married and had children, and they had had children of their own. It broke his heart when he found out that she'd moved on with her life, but still he'd expected it. Although it had seemed like only yesterday he had been by her side while fighting against Hydra, it had been seventy years ago in reality, and he had to let her go and move on.

Jamie however was another story. Like him, she'd had no parents when she was frozen. Her mother, she had told him, had died when she was born and had therefore never known her, and her father had been killed in action during the war, but this was long before she'd even become Liberty Belle. There was only one person she could find that she knew before that was still alive. Her friend from her days boarding in the New York City Public Orphanage, Maggie Anderson. The problem was that she had been Jamie's friend from before she became Liberty Belle, and because she had no military associations, Jamie could not be allowed to approach her, even though she was an old woman by now. This made Jamie very mad. Her one acquaintance from her old life she was forbidden to see, but this wasn't the real reason for her new attitude since arriving in the future. It was her brother that was causing her to act as she was during school, because she was in mourning. Her older brother, Sergeant Trenton Harper, had survived the war, but, as she'd been told by this era's government agency, S.H.I.E.L.D, he hadn't stopped searching for her after she and Steve had been frozen. Even after four months when the rest of the world had given up on looking for them, Trent had been scouring the North Atlantic on a simple sailing boat, until one day he just vanished. There was no final transmission from his boat, or even a suicide letter pinned on his apartment door. One day he reported back to the army he was passing through Northern Europe's waters, and the next there was no report whatsoever. Many people went out searching for him and his boat, but there was trace of him anywhere, and it was assumed he had been lost at sea.

Ever since Jamie had learned of this, the once kind, friendly girl Steve had known Jamie to be had become short-tempered and mean. He knew this wasn't how she truly was, but she was simply mourning. Her brother had been her last link to her family, not to mention her best friend, but now, because she had become frozen and thought dead, her brother was dead in her place. Steve had tried talking to her many times, but Trent was a topic Jamie was avoiding to speak with him about at any costs.

"Hey, Jamie," Steve greeted as Jamie slung off her backpack and tossed it into the sidecar attached to his motorcycle. "Had a good day?"

"Not really," she tonelessly drawled, climbing into the sidecar as she spoke. "As usual, my classes are a bore even though I had no idea what they are talking about. The Cold War? What's so special about a war about who would rather be cold or not?"

Steve openly laughed. "That does sound confusing," he said.

"You have no idea…"

Still chuckling, Steve started up the motorcycle, and pulled out of the line-up of cars containing parents who were still waiting for their children. As usual, both kids and parents alike would stop and stare as Steve and Jamie pulled out of the parking lot. Steve couldn't help but chuckle at the impression they must give the general public, but Jamie just scowled in their direction.

"Lighten up," Steve muttered as they drove down the public streets of the city. "They're just surprised I'm picking you up in a motorcycle instead of a regular car."

"No, they're judging us," Jamie snipped. "It's insulting."

Steve sighed. "You really don't like this era in time, do you?"

"I never asked to be sent into the future," she answered. "I asked to help America during World War Two, and unless I'm mistaken, that ended over seventy years ago, so no, I really don't like this new world."

"Come on, Jamie," Steve argued. "It doesn't seem too bad. Haven't you heard of that thing called the 'internet,' yet?"

"Oh, yes," said Jamie with a throaty growl. "How could I not? Just yesterday someone asked if I learned all my fighting moves from something called a 'you tube video,' and when I asked him what on earth he was talking about, he just stared at me and asked how it was I'm as smart as I am when I don't even know the name for the most popular internet site on the entire globe! Do you know what I said to him?"

"No, what?"

"I told him if he had any right to contradict me when he doesn't even know how to even do a simple multiplication problem such as two times two!"

Steve laughed, turned a corner so they could head into a more populated area of the city. "I'm a bit hungry. You want to grab a snack before we head to the gym?"

"Sure," said Jamie. "How about that café near that big, shiny tower?"

"You mean the Stark Tower?"

"Yeah. I've heard Ironman flies past it a lot, and that it's one of the hotspots in the city to catch a glimpse of him. If we're lucky, maybe we'll have a chance to finally see Howard's famous son."

Steve nodded, and drove in the direction of the café. He had to admit, he was curious about the famed Tony Stark. Howard Stark had been a good man, and he was sure that as his son, Tony Stark was the same.

It took them some time to find a parking spot. Even with a motorcycle with a tiny sidecar, New York was a busy city, and parking was all but nonexistent. They had to park more than a two blocks away, but they didn't care. Steve dismounted the bike, and Jamie climbed out of the sidecar and slung her backpack back on. She couldn't leave it behind. Someone might steal it. They walked in silence down the sidewalk to the small café. Not because they were trying to avoid conversation, but they were a bit overwhelmed whenever they went about the city on foot. When riding on the motorcycle, they would focus on either the road or each other, so it was easy to ignore the changes in both people's behavior and fashion in the twenty-first century compared to the mid-twentieth that they were still accustomed to seeing. When on foot though, it was downright impossible for them not to notice these changes. It was strange to them still, and it was unlikely they would get used to these changes any time soon.

To their luck, they found an empty table outside almost immediately upon arriving, and slid into its two open chairs before anyone could come along and steal them. Steve ordered a coffee and bagel, and Jamie ordered a carton of milk and a chocolate chip cookie. They ate in silence as they scanned the sky for any sign of the alleged machine superhero. Neither of them had anything of importance to say. Time ticked past, and soon they had finished their snacks. Boredom began to flicker across Jamie's face. What a waste of time this was. Why had she even bothered to suggest they come and wait to see this guy? It's not like he had taken the time to go and see them. With a sigh, Jamie unzipped her backpack, took out her purple and red notebooks, and continued working on her theories about Schmidt being in a possible alternate dimension.

Steve glanced over her shoulder at her work. "Explain this to me, Jamie," he said wryly. "How exactly do you think you can even prove that Schmidt didn't die back on that plane?"

"I don't need to be the one to prove it," she said, not even looking up as she scribbled down more words into her purple notebook. "I'm just writing out theories as to _how_ he can still be alive. Whether it is possible to even prove my theories is for someone else to figure out."

Steve rolled his eyes, but left her alone to work as began doodling a sketch of the city skyline on his napkin.

After a while of them sitting there like this, a blonde waitress came up to their table.

"Waiting on the big guy?" she asked.

Steve and Jamie both looked up at her, clearly startled. "Ma'am?" said Steve.

"Ironman," she explained. "A lot of people eat here just to see him fly by."

Jamie sheepishly shrugged and shut both of her notebooks. "We were, initially," she admitted, putting them both back into her backpack. "But it looks like he's not coming by today."

"Maybe another time," Steve added. He took out his wallet, and threw a number of bills down on the table to cover the meal. "C'mon, Jamie."

"The table's yours for as long as you like," she said, flashing Steve a coy smile as she refilled his coffee mug. "Nobody's waiting on it, and we've got free wireless."

As she walked off to another table, Steve and Jamie exchanged puzzled looks. "What's wireless?" Jamie whispered to him.

Steve shrugged and glanced back over at the retreating waitress. "Radio?" he asked. The waitress looked back at them over her shoulder, giggled, and then turned her attention back to her next table of customers.

A loud snicker from the table behind them caught Steve and Jamie's attention, and they turned to see an old man with white hair and dark sunglasses looking at Steve as though he was insane.

"Ask for her number, you moron," he muttered.

Steve flushed. He hadn't even realized that the waitress had been flirting with him. Thankfully, he was spared from having to answer by Jamie getting up and grabbing her backpack.

"Let's go, Steve," she said quickly. "We still have to go to the gym before we go home."

The old man just chuckled. "Kid, you should know you're insistence to leave is ruining your older brother's chance at getting laid…"

Jamie froze. Memories of Trent flashed before her eyes. His warm smile, his strong, calloused hands, the way he had laughed…

Steve stood there awkwardly. He honestly had no idea what to do for Jamie. Even the old man realized he had somehow said the wrong thing.

After several moments, Jamie turned around, tears shining in her eyes. "Steve's not my brother," she said emotionlessly. "My brother is dead."

Then she walked away, and Steve had no choice but to follow after her. It was actually really hard for him to follow her through the large crowds of pedestrians on the sidewalk without having to run after her. Although almost a young teenager now, Jamie was still much smaller than many of the other grown-ups surrounding her, and she could squeeze through many small openings in between people that no adult could do without difficulty. She was fighting back her tears. She didn't want to cry. Trent wouldn't want her to cry for him.

When Steve finally managed to catch up to Jamie, she had already reached the motorcycle, and was sitting and waiting for him in its sidecar.

"Hey, Jamie," said Steve, running right up to her. "Listen, that guy wasn't trying–"

"We should get going, Steve," she said shortly. "We're going to be late for our private training time S.H.I.E.L.D. arranged for us."

"Jamie–"

"Let's go!"

Steve sighed, but climbed on the motorcycle nevertheless. Try as he might to get his former sidekick to talk to him, he couldn't force her to open up.

"Jamie," he said as he started up the motorcycle again. "I get that you don't want to talk about… well, _him…_ but I want you to know, I'm always here if you ever change your mind, okay?"

"Fine," she muttered. "Whatever."

They drove in silence to the fitness center. S.H.I.E.L.D. had actually paid the owner of the place over ten thousand dollars a week in order to have the entire place empty for four hours a day, three days a week, so Steve and Jamie could stay in shape. As the genetically enhanced super soldiers from World War Two, they couldn't train alongside normal people. People would know there was something different about them, and might even guess they were the recently unfrozen Captain America and Liberty Belle. This was a necessary precaution.

They nodded to the owner when they entered, and then headed off to their locker rooms to change. Jamie deposited her backpack into her locker, and took out her workout clothes: black stretchy pants, a light blue t-shirt, white gym shoes, and a white sports bra. There was only one thing Jamie was grateful for since arriving in the future, and that was finally starting to fill out her body. She pulled her shoulder-length dark brown hair back into a ponytail, and entered the gym.

Steve was already there, changed into a white t-shirt and beige cargo pants, and already pounding relentlessly upon a punching bag filled with sand. Jamie didn't disturb him. They had an agreement when it came to training. Unless one of them wanted to train with the other or had some reason to leave early before their allotted four hours were up, they didn't talk to one another. Training was the one and only time they could finally let loose and release all the tension and anger from having been frozen for seventy years out and not worry that people would think they were impossibly strong. That was actually part of the reason Jamie ended up getting in that fistfight with those four boys several weeks back. She wasn't just angry with them, she'd been angry about her new life in general, and had needed to vent out her frustrations.

Without a word, Jamie swept right past Steve and his punching bag, and instead headed over to the kickboxing area. She set up a foam-filled bag in front of her, and began to kick it. At first, she kicked it with absolute precision, making sure each and every kick was well-timed and had a correct amount of power in it so she wouldn't run out of energy, but as time wore on, she slowly began to kick the foamy bag harder and faster. Like Steve, she was slowly giving in to her memories, and kicking each one away was the only way to deal with them.

The swirl of memories from her army days flashed past Jamie's eyes, and with each one she remembered, she kicked the foam bag before her harder and faster than ever, especially when those memories involved Trent. With every memory that involved her brother, Jamie would growl, and kick the bag so hard, she would actually have to pause in her abuse to the bag to get feeling back in her foot, but she would continue after only a few seconds pause.

She wanted to forget. With every kick, Jamie would will the memories away. She didn't want to remember any of it. All the people she'd cared about, all the battles she'd fought, all the hardship she had endured… none of it had mattered. Yes, America had won the war. Yes, Hydra had been stopped. Yes, she and Steve had saved nearly two million lives, but it hadn't been worth it, not when they had been robbed of their lives.

A sudden loud _thwack!_ from behind her caught Jamie's attention, and she stopped in the middle of her kicking and spun around in time to see Steve's punching bag go flying off its metal hook on the ceiling, hit the wall, and explode, sending sand scattering across the wooden floorboards.

"Got caught up in your memories, huh?" she asked Steve.

Steve just sheepishly shrugged. "Yeah," he admitted. "Got lost in the moment…"

Jamie watched as Steve went and got another punching bag, hung it up on the metal hook and the ceiling, and began punching out his memories once again. She herself turned her attention back to the foamy bag in front of her, and was about to start kicking it, when the last voice she expected to hear right then suddenly came from the main entrance to the gym.

"Trouble sleeping, you two?"

Steve and Jamie both turned around. Standing there was the head of S.H.I.E.L.D., Nick Fury, the one who, two months earlier, had informed the two of them they were awake after being frozen in ice for almost seventy years.

Steve gave the punching bag in front of him one final punch before directing his attention fully to Fury. "Well, we slept for seventy years, sir," he said sheepishly. "I think we've both had our fill."

"Then you should both be out celebrating," Fury replied, walked up to them at a leisurely pace. "Seeing the world."

"You and the rest of S.H.I.E.L.D. are already forcing me to," Jamie said exasperatedly. "I've actually been meaning to tell you how much I hate that school you had me enrolled in."

"Ah, yes. I've heard you've made quite a name for yourself amongst your peers," said Fury. "The rebel girl with an exceptionally high I.Q."

"Don't flatter me," said Jamie, turning her attention back to her foamy bag and giving it several strong kicks to deal with her frustrations. "You know as well as I do that I'm only as smart as I am due to having a photographic memory, and I only pick fights to stop bully's from hurting others, or from them trying to jump me. I still hate that you and the rest of S.H.I.E.L.D. are all but forcing me to get out and adapt to the twenty-first century while Steve here just spends his days here or in our apartment."

"She has a point, Director," said Steve. "When we went under, the world was at war. When we woke up, they said we won. They didn't say what we lost."

"We've made some mistakes along the way," Fury admitted. "Some very recently."

This caught Jamie's attention, and she stopped her relentless kicking upon the foamy padded bag and instead walked up to Steve and Fury.

"You're here for a purpose, I'm guessing," she stated. "A mission."

"I am," Fury agreed.

"Trying to get us back in the world?" Steve guessed.

"Trying to save it," Fury replied. Steve and Jamie looked at him, puzzled, but Fury's only explanation to his own statement was to hand Steve a rather large, beige file, which Steve took with a quizzical expression. In order for Jamie to be able to see its contents, Steve sat down beside her and opened the file. The first thing they both saw was a colored picture of an object that they both knew quite even though they had only encountered it one time.

"The Tesseract…" Jamie murmured with surprise.

"Hydra's secret weapon…" Steve muttered.

"Howard Stark fished that out of the ocean when he was looking for you two," Fury explained. "He thought what we think: The Tesseract could be the key to unlimited sustainable energy. That's something the world sorely needs."

"Who took it from you?" Steve asked, handing the file back to Fury.

"He's called Loki," Fury replied. "He's… not from around here."

"Loki?" Jamie repeated, pure surprise replacing her puzzled expression. "You're not referring to the Norse god of trickery and deception, are you?"

"As a matter of fact, I am," said Fury. "Those notes you took of your theories of the Tesseract back in the army have a value of merit when it comes to inter-dimensional travel."

Jamie smiled. Although she hated this new world, she was, at the very least, glad to know that her research from all those years ago held some factoid of truth to them.

"There's a lot we'll have to bring you both up to speed on if you're both in," Fury went on. "The world's gotten even stranger than you already know."

Steve and Jamie exchanged pointed looks of disbelief. "At this point, I doubt anything would surprise us," said Steve, getting to his feet and signaling to Jamie that it was time for them to get going. Jamie didn't argue with him. She just hopped off the bench and followed him towards the doors that led back to the locker rooms.

"Ten bucks says your wrong," Fury argued. Steve and Jamie ignored him. "There's a debriefing packet waiting for you both back at your apartment. Is there anything either of you can tell us about the Tesseract that we ought to know now?"

"You should have left it in the ocean," said Steve.

"Expect Loki to put up a real fight for it," said Jamie.


End file.
